The Vung Tau area in the South of Vietnam is one of the fastest growing and developing harbour and industrial areas of the country. The main drivers are the different port developments along the Thi Vai River downstream of Ho Chi Minh city and in Vung Tau City. This is mainly the result of the master plan of 1999. However, a new master plan is approved in 2005, which will lead to 28 new ports.
This paper aims at assessing the cumulative impacts of master plan 2005 by using a strategic environmental assessment approach.
The method is mainly based on existing literature, land use analysis using GIS and remote sensing, internet research, questionnaires, water and sediment sampling.
The port and industry area increased by 502% the last 15 years, which resulted in mangrove loss in those areas. The impacts on the water quality are especially visible when looking at the results of dissolved oxygen, which have at the already developed port areas, concentrations of even below 1 mg/l. Water and sediments also contain high amounts of oil. Socio-economically the area is improving. The GDP increased for example by 63% between 2000 and 2004. Also the area knows a high migration rate. 55% of the workers originate from outside the province. Because of SO2 concentrations below 0.010 mg/m3, the corrosion impacts on monuments are limited. Soiling on 24 monuments is expected because of traffic increase.
The results show that impacts are expected in different fields of which land use (especially concerning mangroves, port/industrial areas and settlements), socio-economics (migration and economic structure) and water quality (dissolved oxygen) are the most important ones.